Can You Make a Living with Part Time Affiliate Marketing?

All the gurus say affiliate marketing is so easy.

If that’s true, why are there literally millions of affiliate marketers earning $0 month after month.

The thing is, affiliate marketing is NOT as easy as most gurus make it out to be.

You can’t just pick a product or service at JVZoo, Clickbank, Amazon, ShareaSale or Commission Junction and start advertising your affiliate link. I don’t care where you advertise — Google Adwords, Facebook, blogs or ad networks.

Do that and you will almost always burn through more cash than you earn in commissions every month. Unless you have very deep pockets you need to be a lot smarter about your affiliate marketing.

Over the years I’ve tried just about every affiliate marketing strategy known to man-kind. I now make a full-time income — mostly from affiliate marketing. I mix in a few other online income strategies as well, such as product creation and advertising income, but my favorite way to earn online is from affiliate marketing.

Today I’ll share some of my secrets with you.

Right after this banner for a new service I’m considering offering…

Secret #1: Stick to ONE niche

I see far too many affiliate marketers build a site around “ebooks” and then try to sell ebooks via amazon or wherever, on all topics.

That’s a big mistake in my opinion. You need to stick to ONE niche that you know and like.

If your thing is woodworking then build a site around woodworking. Share your best projects. Share your worst screw-ups. Show them you’re human just like them. You can write all about it, make videos about it – however you are most comfortable sharing information.

Just don’t stray off the topic of woodworking and try to sell affiliate products in the Internet marketing niche. Your audience will lose interest and see right through your sales pitch. But if you’re showing them how to build a chair then you tell them you downloaded the plans from x site, well, that’s different.

That’s how you make lots of sales over and over.

Secret #2: Know what you are promoting – I mean REALLY know it.

The easiest products to sell are the ones you use yourself. When I go back through all my affiliate promotions I can easily see that the top performers were the ones I really liked and used myself. Not always, but usually.

That’s why it is so important to promote stuff you would buy or have bought yourself. That way you can literally show potential buyers all the good and the bad of the product. That makes your promotions REAL and GENUINE.

Here’s an example from my own promotions. Awhile back I promoted a program about domaining. Basically buying domains for a few bucks and selling them for profit. So I wrote a blog post about domaining showing the actual results I had with the program.

Secret #3: Promote like you would to your mom or your best friend.

As I mentioned, when you are doing affiliate marketing you are going to need to create some content around the products you promote. I’m talking about emails, blog posts, videos and well… ways to help potential buyers make a decision.

This is where many affiliate marketers go wrong. They go into sales pitches like a bad used car salesman.

Instead of doing that, you need to keep it real. Talk to them like you respect them, want to help them and can relate to them.

Talk about real world things. Inject a little humor. Keep it light and don’t pressure them. They’ll appreciate it and want more.

And yes, they might even but from your link. If not this time, maybe next time.

Here’s an example of an email I sent out to my list a while back that generated a BUNCH of sales….

I then went on to tell them about a great program I had been testing, and shared the affiliate link.

This type of affiliate marketing is not only more fun, it is more effective. More people will pay attention to you when you are not in their face screaming louder than the next guy about why they should buy.

Excellent article,Jim. It hit me directly with where I am at with affiliate marketing-all over place. I think I better follow you! I will certainly purchase the 2017 Master guide and hopefully get it sold to a few of my followers who are lost in the internet mire.
Thanks again.

Hi Jim,
I’m looking forward to following you in 2017. Would you believe that your product was one of the very first I purchased back in 2007 – it was a CD and book and taught me how to html (Sothink) One of the best products too.

Followed too many others since then but I love what you say above and focus on one niche, so I’m about to do that with my latest website.

Nice to hear from you AnneMarie. That was my original ezWebBusinessBuilder CD with the animated Paul character. I had a lot of fun with that project. I used a program called voxproxy for the animations. My dad burned the CD’s and shipped them all out for me. Must have sold 1000 of them or more.

Hey, I’m glad to see you back and focusing on one niche. I wish you lots of success with that! If you need any help, you know where to find me.

Nice post Jim, I burnt out a few large lists churning and burning. It worked nicely for a while, but not anymore. I plan to start over and do it the way you recommend. I’m sure it will work out a lot better.

Over the years, I’ve been led astray by the get-rich-quick schemes of unethical sellers. I’ve never made any money from them. What you say makes sense–connecting with your potential buyers sounds like a better way to approach affiliate sales. Thank you for your insights!

Just found out your site from a recommendation in the Warrior Forum. Great post here, Jim. A few of your points really hit home for me. Fyi, I have been doing IM since 2007, with limited success. Your advice as posted above, ring true. Keep up the good work 🙂

I have been at this affiliate marketing since a little before the year 2000. I got active about it about 4 years ago. I have seen some bad products and some very good ones. I have made a little money and still make a few bucks each month. I guess what I am getting to is – how do you stay ahead of the game, stay motivated in the midst of bad things happening?

I have been receiving your blog for some years and I love how you stay up-beat.

Great question Sherwood! I’ve seen a lot through the years and understand what you mean by staying motivated. Online business has its ups and downs for sure, and you do have to stay on top of things and keep at it. Things change so fast. Things like lost search engine ranking from a Google algorithm change, lower and lower deliver rates of emails due to spam filters – can make it a challenge. But it still beats having a 9-5 job. I did that for 10 years after I got out of the Air Force 1986. The last 20 years in online marketing I wouldn’t change for everything. Being able to live like I want and watch my kids grow up, send time with my wife – makes all the bulls&$% worth it.

Jim, I am now into my 20th year online. I have made an awful lot of mistakes and still am, such as not keeping my site updated, for one… However, I have to say that building my subscriber list and regularly communicating with them are the most important things I’ve done to increase sales. And, as you say, I keep it personal. I might start off writing about how well the wife’s garden is doing, the million motorcycles that showed up for bike week or the hurricane that blew through the region recently. I always include a photo or two…then on to the topic of the site along with product mentions with links. I believe that is the key to survival. Affiliate sales is not for the faint-hearted, but several streams of income every month is awfully nice. Tom

You nailed it Tom. Actually it took be many years to figure that out too! People like to buy from people and CONNECT. It’s another big secret to affiliate marketing. Actually, I should have included that as secret #4 in this post — but smart people who read the comments will see that you’ve done it for me!

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Affiliate Disclosure

One of the ways I earn money online is by endorsing products and services for merchants -- ONLY IF I think they're useful and offer excellent value. My recommendations may be based on a review or my personal or professional relationship with the vendor. Often times I receive the product for free for review purposes and in most cases, I have used that product to my personal satisfaction in my own business. Please understand that if you decide to purchase a product based on my recommendation I may be compensated via a commission. Before buying anything online I recommend you do your OWN due-diligence and only buy products/services with a money back guarantee. Also please understand that many people do little to nothing with the products they buy and therefore get no measurable results. So never buy anything without a plan to use it!